Op-ed: When will iPhone 5 users stop seeing black bars on their apps?

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The iPhone 5 has been out for nearly two months now. But judging by the overall app landscape, you'd hardly know it has been seven weeks (or eight, if you start counting at the date of the announcement) since the iPhone 5 made its debut. While some apps have been updated to take advantage of the iPhone 5's larger screen, many more have not.

What's the holdup? That's the question we've found ourselves asking here at the Ars Orbiting HQ. Whether we use the iPhone 5 because it's directly connected to our jobs (ahem) or because it's what works best in our personal lives, we've all run into apps that are clearly still formatted for the smaller iPhone 4/4S screen, with black bars at the top and bottom. And these aren't little, no-name apps either—there are some major companies, firms with wildly popular applications, that have yet to update their apps for the iPhone 5. [Editor's Note: most of the applications have received other maintenance updates, and several of them new features. But no iPhone 5 screen support. This is not a list of "dead" apps.]

Who are we talking about? There are a couple of software giants: Google—which mysteriously has updated its Gmail and Chrome apps, but not Latitude, Translate, or Voice—and Microsoft, with its Bing app. There are also the airlines, like American Airlines, FlyDelta, and jetBlue, which have yet to update their apps for the larger screen, or Amtrak for train enthusiasts like our Deputy Editor Nate Anderson.

And then there are the news organizations: BBC News, NPR News, ESPN Scorecenter, Zite, and News.me (though we're not holding our breath for that last one). And the ones that help us get things done every day, like Peapod, American Express, Zipcar, GrubHub, TaxiMagic, Uber, eTrade, and Withings. Some major communications apps have yet to be updated, like Skype and AIM.

Gamers don't appear to be particularly high on the update priority list either. Scramble, Matching,Plants vs. Zombies, the original AngryBirds, FruitNinja, Civ Revolution, Tetris, Battleship, Catapult King, Fieldrunners,Fieldrunners 2, Modern War, Crime City, and Kingdom Age were all named by Ars staffers as apps that don't have iPhone 5 versions yet.

And there are plenty more where those came from.

But why?

No one is required to issue an update just for our edification—that's the whole benefit to iOS 6 being able to run apps made for iPhone 4/4S on an iPhone 5's screen. But the time it has taken for these (and other) apps to see an update for Apple's latest iPhone is beginning to drag out, and it makes it seem like app makers don't care as much about the iPhone as they once did—at least from an end-user's point of view.

One thing we do know is that Apple's review process doesn't appear to be holding things back: we're told by several developers that the wait time on the iOS App Store is roughly a week or less right now. Those six to seven other weeks are still unaccounted for.

But there are a number of other theories floating around about the holdup. One developer speculated that companies might be holding onto their iPhone 5-formatted apps for a planned feature update sometime in the future—that is, maybe Google is planning to add some mind-blowing new features to its Voice app, and it will update the app for the iPhone 5 when that release is finally out.

Another developer suggested that some app makers might be fearful of making their existing app ratings and reviews invisible by issuing a brand new update for iPhone 5. Apple's App Store reviews system now makes a point of only showing you reviews for the most current version of the app as a default, so if a particular app has some phenomenal reviews for an older version, the developer may be hesitant to start "anew" with a fresh slate.

This plays into the next reason speculated by some of our developer sources: "laziness and a lack of pride." Could it be that some of these app makers just don't feel the need to rush to get their apps up-to-speed on the latest iPhone, and they don't care enough about their work to want to do so quickly? That frame of mind undoubtedly plagues many of the thousands of apps on the App Store, though we would be disappointed to learn that the companies behind some of the bigger apps feel that way about their end-user experiences.

Feeling a little stale

Whatever reason companies have for holding off on updating their apps for the iPhone 5, the end result is that the App Store is beginning to feel a bit stale for longtime and new users alike. Imagine being one of the 5 million people who bought an iPhone 5 over its launch weekend in September and being brand new to the platform: how would you feel if half the apps you tried to download weren't made with your device in mind?

Even though it's not directly Apple's fault, it is Apple's problem. After all, Apple benefits from the perception that it has the hottest mobile platform on both the developer and the user side. Without more current updates for the most recent devices, it looks from the outside like iOS as a platform is slowing down. Where is the enthusiasm to get things up to date?

I reached out to Apple for comment on this phenomenon but received no response by publication time.

To be fair, there are plenty of developers who have updated their apps to be more friendly to the iPhone 5's elongated screen. Facebook, Alien Blue, Kindle, Nest, Instagram, Instapaper, Tripit, The Weather Channel, Pandora, Spotify, Chase… all these apps and more have been updated to take advantage of the larger screen, and their users have noticed.

So to you developers who are dragging your feet, where's the love for the iPhone 5?

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui